An Exploration of Pursuing Professional Explorations
My Data Science Job Search: August - October, 2020
Rohan Lewis
2020.09.29 (Updated 2020.10.06)
I began applying for Information Technology jobs on August 11th, 2020. I used LinkedIn as my primary source of information. I varied between large and small companies, EasyApply and normal applications via company job application portals or website submissions, and various locations across the US. I even applied to a job in Sydney, Australia (by accident) and a job in Toronto, Canada.
I saved my application information in an Excel Spreadsheet as I applied. I decided to use it to practice some visualization techniques.
#General Packages.
from datetime import date
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import re
#Specific Packages
from wordcloud import WordCloud
import bar_chart_race as bcr
from IPython.display import Video
import plotly.graph_objects as go
from pywaffle import Waffle
#Read data.
df = pd.read_excel(r'D:\Data Science\Completed\Jobs\Jobs.xlsx')
lat_lons = pd.read_excel(r'D:\Data Science\Completed\Jobs\uscities.xlsx')
#Convert datetime columns to date.
df['Date_Applied'] = df['Date_Applied'].apply(lambda x: x.date())
df['Rejection_Email'] = df['Rejection_Email'].apply(lambda x: x.date())
df['Viewed_Email'] = df['Viewed_Email'].apply(lambda x: x.date())
#Current Numbers
print("As of " + date.today().strftime("%A, %B %d, %Y") + ", I have applied to " + str(df.shape[0]) + " jobs.")
Job Title
This section looks at the specific job titles.
- I eliminated all non alphabetical characters.
- A recurring theme in job titles was numbering, such as "Data Analyst II" or "Data Scientist III". Since I had already eliminated numbers, I needed to eliminate Roman Numerals (only I, II, and III).
- I had some false negatives, so I fixed those.
- "AR VR" was changed back to "AR/VR" for one title.
- "C C" was changed back to "C2C" for one title.
- "Microsoft" was changed to "Microsoft-365" for one title.
- "Non IT" was changed back to "Non-IT" for one title.
- Words were then tallied.
Word Frequencies
Below are the top 10 and bottom 10 (some of the single occuring) words from the job titles.
#Combine all job titles into one string.
jobs_string = ' '.join(df['Title'])
#Only letters are useful.
regex = re.compile('[^a-zA-Z]')
#Remove all non letters, and remove ' I ', ' II ', ' III '.
jobs_string = regex.sub(' ', jobs_string).replace(' I ',' ').replace(' II ',' ').replace(' III ',' ')
#Specific Replacement.
jobs_string = jobs_string.replace('AR VR','AR/VR').replace('C C', 'C2C').replace('Microsoft', 'Microsoft-365').replace('Non IT', 'Non-IT')
#Create a frequency distribution of all words in the job titles.
jobs_dict = {}
jobs_words = jobs_string.split()
for word in jobs_words :
if word not in jobs_dict.keys() :
jobs_dict[word] = 1
else :
jobs_dict[word] += 1
#Convert frequency distribution to dataframe, sort by frequency.
jobs_df = pd.DataFrame({'Word' : list(jobs_dict.keys()),
'Count' : list(jobs_dict.values())}).sort_values(by = 'Count', ascending = False, axis = 0).reset_index(drop = True)
jobs_df.head(10)
jobs_df.tail(10)
Word Cloud
I thought a word cloud would be a fun representation to look at the job titles. The proportional size has been rescaled.
jobs_wc = WordCloud(background_color = 'white',
max_words = 300,
collocations = False,
relative_scaling = 0)
jobs_wc.generate(jobs_string)
plt.figure(figsize = (15, 11))
plt.imshow(jobs_wc, interpolation = 'bilinear')
plt.axis('off');
Companies
Some companies are hiring heavily. Some are recruiting and staffing agencies for others.
Once my application was in a system on a particular company's career portal page, it was easy to reapply. I used this quite a bit for companies like Amazon, Google, MITRE, and PayPal.
I used LinkedIn's EasyApply for many applications as well.
For the others, I sometimes applied as a guest, sometimes only had to upload my resume and cover, sometimes had to go through a 20 minute ordeal just for one opening. It varied. ¯_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
Company Applications by Date
See Appendix for full table of cumulative applications by company and date, sorted alphabetically and chronologically, respectively.
#List of all companies.
companies = df['Company'].unique()
#Dates from first application to today.
date_index = pd.date_range(start = min(df['Date_Applied']), end = date.today())
#Create new data frame of 0s.
application_df = pd.DataFrame(index = date_index, columns = companies).fillna(0)
#Create cumulative count of job applications by company and date.
for i in range(len(df)) :
company = df.iloc[i, 1]
date_app = df.iloc[i, 7]
application_df.loc[date_app:, company] += 1
#Alphabetical
application_df = application_df.reindex(sorted(application_df.columns), axis=1)
#Total number of applications to each company.
cumulative_app_count = application_df.iloc[[-1]]
major_companies = cumulative_app_count.columns[(cumulative_app_count >= 5).iloc[0]]
minor_companies = cumulative_app_count.columns[(cumulative_app_count < 5).iloc[0]].tolist()
#Create a dummy company called 'Other', containing all companies with less than 4 applications.
major_df = pd.DataFrame.copy(application_df)
major_df['Other'] = major_df[minor_companies].sum(axis = 1)
major_df.drop(minor_companies, axis = 1, inplace = True)
#Check number of bars to include.
#major_df.shape
Bar Chart Race
Below is an animation of the above data. Bar chart races run more smoothly with larger numbers, like population, or monetary amounts, over longer periods of time. But I am happy the way this turned out.
bold_colors = ['#f0f0f0', '#3cb44b', '#e6194b', '#fffac8', '#9a6324', '#e6beff', '#fabebe', '#000075',
'#ffe119', '#008080', '#4363d8', '#ffffff', '#bcf60c', '#46f0f0', '#911eb4', '#800000',
'#f032e6', '#808000', '#ffd8b1', '#f58231', '#aaffc3', '#000000', '#ca1699']
apps = bcr.bar_chart_race(df = major_df,
filename = 'applications.mp4',
orientation = 'h',
sort = 'desc',
n_bars = 15,
cmap = bold_colors[0:22],
filter_column_colors = False,
period_fmt = '%B %d, %Y',
period_label = {'x': 0.99,
'y': 0.155,
'ha': 'right',
'size': 14},
period_summary_func = lambda v, r: {'x': 0.99,
'y': 0.05,
's': f"{v.sum():,.0f} applications completed.\nCompanies with less than 4 applications are grouped in 'Other'.",
'ha': 'right',
'size': 9,
'weight': 'normal'},
title = 'Total Number of Jobs Applied to by Company and Date',
steps_per_period = 10)
Video("applications.mp4")
Job Location
Some slight modifications were made from LinkedIn data during the application process:
- For Curate Partners, a job location was changed from Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Area to Raleigh.
- For Parker & Lynch, a job location was changed from Orange County to Los Angeles.
- For Synectics, a job location was changed from Greater Chicago to Chicago.
- For several companies, job locations were changed from "Greater" or "Metropolitan" of a city to that city.
In addition, for Common App, the job location was changed from none specified to Arlington. I did not learn about their opening from LinkedIn.
By City
Remote Locations
Several jobs were advertised with no city, only remote.
df[df['City'] == "Remote"]
I retrieved their office locations and manually entered them.
#Manual City, State_abbv, and State entry.
dict_cs = {192: ("Knoxville", "TN", "Tennessee"),
413: ("San Francisco", "CA", "California"),
420: ("New York", "NY", "New York"),
425: ("New York", "NY", "New York"),
437: ("Portland", "OR", "Oregon")}
#Loop to manually enter missing City, State_abbv, and State entry for Remote locations.
for idx in dict_cs :
temp_city = dict_cs[idx][0]
temp_state_abbv = dict_cs[idx][1]
temp_state = dict_cs[idx][2]
df.at[idx, 'City'] = temp_city
df.at[idx, 'State_abbv'] = temp_state_abbv
df.at[idx, 'State'] = temp_state
Missing Cities
Several jobs I applied to were in cities not in the spreadsheet I downloaded.
#Select relevant columns.
df_loc = df[['City', 'State_abbv', 'State', 'Date_Applied']]
#Select only city, state, and location columns.
lat_lons = lat_lons[['city', 'state_id', 'lat', 'lng']]
#Count the number of applications.
city_tally = df_loc.groupby(['City', 'State_abbv', 'State']).count().reset_index()
#Merge to get latitude, longitude for each city.
merged = pd.merge(city_tally,
lat_lons,
how = 'left',
left_on = ['City', 'State_abbv'],
right_on = ['city', 'state_id'])
#Several cities are not in the list.
merged[merged['city'].isna()]
Manual Removal and Entry
Two were from Australia and Canada. For the others, I retrieved values from Google. An approximate average value was chosen for Dallas-Ft. Worth.
#Huxley job from Sydney, Australia was removed.
merged = merged[merged.State_abbv != 'AU']
#Prodigy Academy job from Toronto, Canada was removed.
merged = merged[merged.State_abbv != 'CN']
#Manual latitude and longitude entry.
dict_loc = {8: (42.4906, -71.2760),
21: (40.5940, -74.6049),
27: (40.5294, -75.3937),
43: (32.7598, -97.0646),
88: (38.2773, -76.4229),
132: (42.3668, -71.3031)}
#Loop to manually enter missing latitude and longitudes.
for idx in dict_loc :
lat = dict_loc[idx][0]
lon = dict_loc[idx][1]
merged.at[idx, 'lat'] = lat
merged.at[idx, 'lng'] = lon
#Rename columns and drop redundant columns
merged = merged.rename(columns = {'Date_Applied' : 'Count',
'lat': 'Latitude',
'lng': 'Longitude'}).drop(['city', 'state_id'], axis = 1)
Mountain View
My left join was 11 off. I soon determined that two cities in California are named Mountain View.
merged[merged.City == 'Mountain View']
I removed the one not in the Bay Area. All cities, with their state, number of applications, and location, are displayed below.
merged = merged[(merged['Latitude'] != 38.0093) | (merged['Longitude'] != -122.1169)]
merged
By State
See Appendix for frequency by state.
#Group job applications by State, count them, reset the index, drop the date, and rename City to Count.
state_tally = merged[['Count', 'State_abbv', 'State']].groupby(['State_abbv', 'State']).sum().sort_values(by = 'Count', ascending = False, axis = 0).reset_index()
US Map
Below is an interactive map of the US. Applications are sorted by city and state.
#Singular or Plural.
def f(row) :
if row['Count'] == 1 :
string_val = ' application in '
else :
string_val = ' applications in '
return string_val
#Number of applications per city as text.
merged['Text'] = merged['Count'].astype(str) + merged.apply(f, axis = 1) + merged['City'] + ', ' + merged['State_abbv'] + '.'
#Number of applications per state as text.
state_tally['Text'] = state_tally['Count'].astype(str) + state_tally.apply(f, axis = 1) + state_tally['State'] + '.'
#Color in states by number of applications.
state_map_data = go.Choropleth(locations = state_tally['State_abbv'],
z = state_tally['Count'],
text = state_tally['Text'],
hoverinfo = 'text',
locationmode = 'USA-states',
colorbar = {'title': "<b>Applications</b>",
'thicknessmode': "pixels",
'thickness': 70,
'lenmode': "pixels",
'len': 400,
'titlefont': {'size': 16},
'tickfont': {'size': 12},
'tickvals': [0, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100]},
colorscale = 'Blues')
#Plot cities, size corresponds to number of applications.
city_map_data = go.Scattergeo(lon = merged['Longitude'],
lat = merged['Latitude'],
text = merged['Text'],
hoverinfo = 'text',
locationmode = 'USA-states',
marker = {'size': 10*np.sqrt(merged['Count']),
'color': 'Darkgreen'})
data = [state_map_data, city_map_data]
fig = go.Figure(data = data)
fig.update_layout(title = {'text': 'Where I Have Applied (Hover for Cities and Count)',
'font': {'size': 30}},
geo_scope = 'usa',
width = 950,
height = 550)
Waffle Plot
Below is the distribution of applications by state.
#Sort by number of applications for each state.
waffle_data = state_tally[['State', 'Count']]
#Add a row for states with less than 3 applications. 'Other' also includes Australia and Japan.
waffle_data = waffle_data.append(pd.DataFrame({'State': ['Other'], 'Count': [2]})).reset_index(drop = True)
to_drop = []
#Add applications from states with less than 4 to 'Other'.
for i in waffle_data.index :
if waffle_data.iloc[i]['Count'] < 4 :
temp = waffle_data.iloc[i]['Count']
waffle_data.at[33, 'Count'] += temp
to_drop.append(i)
#Remove states with less than 3. Change orientation of data.
waffle_data = waffle_data.drop(labels = to_drop, axis = 0).reset_index(drop = True).set_index('State').transpose()
waffle_data.shape
fig = plt.figure(FigureClass = Waffle,
rows = 17,
values = waffle_data.values.tolist()[0],
labels = waffle_data.columns.tolist(),
figsize = (14, 9),
colors = bold_colors[0:20],
legend = {'loc': 'upper left',
'ncol': 2,
'fontsize': 13})
pd.set_option('display.max_columns', None)
display(application_df)
State Frequency¶
state_tally